From the TV Front

• Deadline reports that “The BBC and BritBox International have landed on Endless Night as their latest Agatha Christie adaptation from Sarah Phelps. Set in 1967, the book is neither a Poirot [n]or a Marple but follows man-of-many-trades Michael Rogers, who finds himself working as chauffeur for the enigmatic designer du jour Rudolf Santonix. Transfixed by Santonix’s latest project, a beautiful house in the English countryside, Mike dreams of meeting the love of his life and taking up residence. But unbeknownst to Mike, the house that he has set his heart on has a dark past that goes back for centuries.” There’s no casting news yet, but filming is expected to begin later this year.

• With the debut of Netflix’s Department Q expected on May 29, a trailer for that crime drama—based on Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen’s police procedural series (The Keeper of Lost Causes, etc.)—was released earlier in the week. This British adaptation, set in Edinburgh, Scotland, follows a previous series of Danish films adapted from Adler-Olsen’s novels about a once-respected homicide cop, Carl Mørck, demoted to cold-case investigations. Matthew Goode (Downton Abbey, Ordeal by Innocence) stars in the new program as detective Morck (now without the “ø”). The International Movie Database (IMDb) says nine episodes will comprise Department Q’s opening season.

• We learned last fall that Scottish actress Phyllis Logan (another Downton Abbey regular) will play Cora Felton, the author of a syndicated puzzle column, in The Puzzle Lady from UK broadcaster Channel 5. As The Killing Times says, this six-episode mystery—derived from the late Parnell Hall’s eight Puzzle Lady books—“begins when a strange murder takes place in the sleepy market town of Bakerbury. The local police are baffled by a crossword puzzle left on the body. With their case going nowhere, they turn reluctantly to Cora Felton, a recent arrival in Bakerbury; whose fame as the eponymous Puzzle Lady suggests she can help DCI Hooper [to be played by Adam Best] and the Bakerbury police solve its first murder case. But the eccentric Cora isn’t who she claims to be, and as she throws herself into a murder case that has the town’s residents baffled, she starts to gather allies and enemies in equal measure.” No premiere date has been announced, but it’s expected to be sometime in 2025.

• And though this has sod all to do with crime fiction … Did you know that a third and last Downton Abbey theatrical release is coming in September of this year? I first heard about it while looking for information about Logan and The Puzzle Lady. With the exception of Maggie Smith, who died in late 2024, the majority of Downton cast members are to return in the coming movie, appropriately titled Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. While I was slightly disappointed in the second picture (2022’s Downton Abbey: A New Era), you can bet that as a longtime fan of the original 2010-2015 TV program, I shall be buying tickets as soon as possible to see this third sequel.

Bullet Points: Valentines Edition

Forgive me, dear readers, for I have sinned. It’s been three and a half months since my last “Bullet Points” news wrap-up. Which doesn’t mean I’ve been sitting on my ass in the meantime, doing nothing. In fact, the closing months of 2023 were some of last year’s busiest here at The Rap Sheet. But they were crammed full of “best books of the year” posts, leaving me little time to concentrate on compiling miscellaneous items related to this genre. Which is too bad, because I’ve always enjoyed producing pieces of this sort.

Long before The Rap Sheet existed, way back in my college days, I penned (actually, typed—on a manual typewriter!) a column of information and opinion for the school’s weekly newspaper called “In the Fast Lane.” Since that time, I’ve launched similar wrap-ups for the assorted publications at which I found employment (most of which no longer exist), from Oregon Magazine’s “Grapevine” and Monthly Detroit’s “Lip Service” to “Native Intelligence” (Washington Magazine) and a media-news compendium known as “Cuff Notes” (Seattle Weekly). While my journalism career has allowed me ample opportunities to compose longer, more in-depth pieces, I’ve never lost my taste for gathering together tidings of greater and lesser import, all for the education and entertainment of the reading public.

In that sense, “Bullet Points” might be thought of as the latest incarnation of an enterprise I’ve engaged in since I was too young to order bar service. Herewith, my first wrap-up of 2024.

• At almost 900 pages in length, there’s no question that The FBI Dossier: A Guide to the Classic TV Series Produced by Quinn Martin and Starring Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. (Black Pawn Press), by Bill Sullivan with Ed Robertson, is the definitive resource for fans of ABC’s The FBI (1965-1974). It may also provide a supposedly large segment of modern society with an introduction—or reintroduction—to that hour-long law-enforcement procedural. Despite the broadcast having scored top-10 or at least top-20 ratings during most of its nine years on the boob-tube, Sullivan and Robertson quote one source as calling it “the most successful long-running show that no one seems to remember.” And they appear determined, with this paperback doorstopper, to overcome that astonishing cultural amnesia. The FBI Dossier isn’t merely an episode guide, though you can certainly find in its pages detailed material about all 241 installments of the series. It boasts, as well, a brief history of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation; listings of the various performers who trod across the program’s sets (Ed Asner, Suzanne Pleshette, Henry Darrow, Lindsay Wagner, Roy Thinnes, etc.); promotional materials and advertisements for The FBI; and a veritable flood of intriguing info about the show’s regulars (notably the friendship between Zimbalist and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover), its creators (Quinn Martin and Philip Saltzman), and its place in the history of American television. I was far from a loyal follower of The FBI, yet I found myself sitting for significant stretches of time recently with this book propped open on my lap, jumping randomly between its sections, enthralled throughout by the knowledge and insights its authors have to share. An index at the back might have made finding such particulars easier, but its lack isn’t a terrible knock on the product as a whole. As It’s About TV! blogger Mitchell Hadley wrote in his own critique of this work, “Don’t let the book’s size be daunting; if you’re a fan of The FBI—either from its original run or through the DVDs that Warner [Bros.] issued in the last few years—The FBI Dossier is a must-have. If you’re unfamiliar with the series, or have seen just a few episodes, you’ll find yourself wanting to read, and watch, more.”

• Remember A.J. Finn, otherwise known by his real moniker, Daniel Mallory? His 2018 psychological thriller, The Woman in the Window, became an international best-seller and was adapted into a 2021 film of that same name. But as The Real Book Spy’s Ryan Steck recalls, the book editor-turned-novelist’s skyrocketing renown took a severe hit in 2019, when The New Yorker published a “scathing and surgical takedown of Mallory/Finn, taking nearly 12,000 words to paint a full picture of Mallory’s antics—which range from ‘borrowing story ideas’ to lying about having brain cancer to lying about relatives dying to lying about his own background and education (specifically that he had a master’s degree from Oxford; he, apparently, does not) to lying about his past work history.” Only now, five years after The Woman in the Window debuted, does Finn have a second novel in the offing: End of Story, due out from William Morrow on February 20. Bookpage says that its story, “billed as “part Knives Out, part Agatha Christie, … centers on mystery novelist Sebastian Trapp, who invites Nicky Hunter, an expert on detective fiction, to his luxurious home to help draft his memoirs. But while there, Nicky becomes obsessed with solving the mysterious disappearance of Sebastian’s first wife and son.”

• Next Wednesday, February 14, will be Valentine’s Day. In anticipation of that, The Book Decoder has selected “10 Gripping Mystery Novels Where Romance Takes a Dark Turn.” And yes, before you ask, Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl is included.

• The blog Promoting Crime Fiction presents its own impressive aggregation of Valentine’s Day mysteries, while Janet Rudolph tenders a no-less-substantial list in Mystery Fanfare.

• U.S. publisher Soho Press is introducing a new horror-fiction imprint called Hell’s Hundred. “Named after the once bleak, now chic New York City neighborhood of SoHo—formerly known as ‘hell’s hundred acres’ for its grim industrial facades and deadly fires—Hell’s Hundred provides fertile ground for new nightmares to take root,” explains the imprint’s inaugral catalogue. Publishers Weekly adds: “The first two books from Hell’s Hundred will debut this summer. First up is youthjuice, by former beauty editor E.K. Sathue [the pseudonym of Erin Mayer], which Soho associate editor Taz Urnov bills as ‘a horror satire about the beauty industry that really puts the gore in gorgeous,’ slated for June. And in August, Soho Crime list stalwart Stuart Neville, whose noir mysteries often incorporate supernatural elements and regularly border on horror proper, will jump to the Hell’s Hundred list with Blood Like Mine, his tenth book for the publisher. Soho calls the novel ‘a chilling monster story about a mother and daughter on the run across the Southwest’ and ‘as much an inauguration of Hell’s Hundred as it is a new chapter in Neville’s oeuvre.’”

• Deadline notes that​, 30 years after his initial appearance on NBC-TV’s Law & Order, actor Sam Waterston is leaving the show. “Waterston’s final appearance as District Attorney Jack McCoy, whom he played across more than 400 episodes, will air on February 22,” we’re told. “As Waterston exits, the cast will be joined by Tony Goldwyn (Oppenheimer, Scandal), who will portray the new district attorney. Goldwyn has previously starred in the Law & Order spinoff Criminal Intent as Frank Goren, a character who died in the series. Goldwyn will be playing a new character on Law & Order.”

• Editor George Easter is out with the first issue of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine for 2024. Roughly the opening quarter of this 88-page PDF-only quarterly is devoted to “best crime fiction of 2023” lists, gleaned from DP’s own critics as well as those from assorted other sources (including The Rap Sheet). In addition, there are myriad reviews of new and soon-to-be-published fiction released on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as in Australia (thanks to contributor Jeff Popple), and a selection of the “most anticipated mysteries of 2024.” Robin Agnew’s “Historical Emporium” column of historical mysteries is always a DP go-to for me, and Easter introduces here “Ripster’s Revivals,” a new feature by Mike Ripley (also to be found in Shots) that focuses on crime novels and thrillers he’s been intending to read for years, but never quite got around to. Finally, Easter’s “Editor’s Message” contains tidbits of news about the health of people long involved with the magazine, including L.J. Roberts, who he says “has unfortunately not rebounded from her most recent health crisis and will have to discontinue her review column for the foreseeable future.” Click here to subscribe to Deadly Pleasures for $10 per annum.

• After many years as a journalist, I am naturally drawn to books and movies in which reporters play prominent roles. A few years back I wrote a CrimeReads piece about news gatherers involved in the solving of fictional mysteries. More recently, and for the same online publication, fellow ink-stained wretch Keith Roysdon dwelt upon the intersection of films and newspapers, while in an earlier piece author Tara Lush celebrated the appearance of reporters in cozy whodunits. It all makes me want to break out one of my old reporter’s notebooks and set to questioning somebody about something!

• If you’re already on the CrimeReads site, poking around, search out these three terrific February posts: “The 1931 Murder That Foretold a New Era of Crime and Corruption in New York City,” an excerpt from Michael Wolraich’s new non-fiction work, The Bishop and the Butterfly (which just happens to be the next book on my TBR stack); “Drama King: Hake Talbot and the Art of the Impossible,” Curtis Evans’ appreciation of “two cleverly deceptive tales by mystery's greatest showman”; and the latest fine entry in Neil Nyren’s “Crime Reader’s Guide to the Classics” series, appraising the three-decades-long career of Laurie R. King, whose 18th Mary Russell book, The Lantern’s Dance, will be released next week by Bantam Books.

• Brydon Coverdale, a journalist based in Melbourne, has won the 2024 Louie Award, given by the Australian Crime Writers Association for best fast fiction (stories of up to 500 words in length). His entry, “Good Old Collingwood Forever,” followed this year’s theme of “artificial intelligence.” The ACWA also commended two other writers for their submissions: Catherine Craig for “Abe Taught Me,” and Brent Towns for “She Made Me.” According to a press notice, “The winner receives $500 cash and the two highly commended writers receive $125 each.” You will find links to all of their stories here.

• The Essential Chester Himes, a new Everyman’s Library collection of that author’s four best-remembered Grave Digger Jones/Coffin Ed Johnson novels, is prominently on my birthday wishlist this spring. So I was delighted to read, in advance, this adaptation of S.A. Cosby’s introduction to said work in The New York Times. “If Chandler is considered the poet of crime fiction and Hammett its great journalist,” Cosby opines, “then Himes is the songwriter of the downtrodden. His stories sing with a fire and light that comes from a simmering sense of loss. A loss of respect, of humanity, of honor.”

(Left) Toby Jones stars in Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office on PBS.

• My TV viewing habits have been all over the map so far in 2024. I really enjoyed watching former Happy Valley star Sarah Lancashire’s warm-hearted and multi-layered portrayal of cookbook author/cooking show chef Julia Child in HBO Max’s Julia, only to learn that series was cancelled after two seasons on the air. I’m four episodes into Monsieur Spade, which casts Clive Owen as Dashiell Hammett’s former San Francisco gumshoe, Sam Spade, in a complex yarn about slain nuns and a much-sought-after but mysterious boy. Owen is entirely credible as Spade, and the program’s periodic references to The Maltese Falcon just make me smile. Hulu-TV’s Death and Other Details, about a locked-room murder on board a luxury cruise line, I find far less captivating—and more than moderately confusing—but will try to stick with it through all 10 of its weekly installments. And now I’m looking forward to the U.S. presentation of Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office, set to premiere under PBS’ Masterpiece umbrella on Sunday, April 7. This four-part drama, based on a true story and aired originally on UK screens in January, isn’t crime fiction, but it is certainly rooted in wrongdoings. Here’s a plot synopsis supplied by PBS:

When money started to seemingly disappear from its local branches, [Great Britain’s] government-owned Post Office wrongly blamed their own managers for its apparent loss. For more than a decade, hundreds were accused of theft and fraud, and many were even sent to prison—leaving lives, marriages, and reputations in ruins. But the issue was actually caused by errors in the Post Office’s own computer system—something it denied for years. Revealing a shocking David vs. Goliath fight for justice, this is the story of the decent ordinary people who were relentlessly pursued, coerced and controlled by a powerful corporation, and their ongoing battle, against seemingly insurmountable odds, to right so many horrific wrongs.

Toby Jones (The Witness for the Prosecution, The Pale Blue Eye) leads the ensemble cast of this series, which The Guardian called “a devastating tale of a national scandal.”

• Oh, and I still haven’t seen all of Jodi Foster’s True Detective: Night Country. I tuned in to the first of its half-dozen episodes on HBO back in mid-January, but found the plot—with its supernatural elements—more than a tad confounding. Maybe I simply wasn’t in the right mood, or my workday had left me unable to relax and soak it in. Whatever the case might have been, I determined to wait until the final installment was broadcast on February 18, and then binge-watch this fourth season of True Detective over a week. I’ve done that on occasions when a show’s story is so involved that viewing one episode every seven days allows me time to forget plot nuances.

• A belated “happy birthday” to Batman co-creator Bill Finger!

• I came to Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen’s fiction fairly early, reviewing his first Department Q mystery, One Last Chance, for Kirkus Reviews back in 2011. Now The Killing Times brings word that Netflix is preparing a small-screen series based on those books, actually adapted from a succession of earlier Danish films and featuring British actor Matthew Goode (Downtown Abbey, The Crown) as homicide cop Carl Morck. This new show will be set in Edinburgh, rather than Copenhagen. The Killing Times offers the following summary of its storyline: “After a violent incident turns Morck’s life upside down, the emotionally scarred detective is charged with setting up a cold case unit, Department Q, upon his return to work. At first, the disillusioned cop is happy to waste his days away, but his detective instincts are ultimately reawakened and his new department becomes a magnet for a crew of misfits and mavericks.” There is as yet no reliable estimation of a debut date for this program.

• Speaking of forthcoming TV presentations, Deadline reports:

The BBC is keeping its Agatha Christie tradition alive by setting Towards Zero as its next adaptation of the great author’s work.

Following on from 2023’s limited series Murder Is Easy, the BBC has commissioned Mammoth Screen and Agatha Christie Limited to reimagine the writer’s 1944 novel.

Towards Zero unfolds around the murder of an elderly widow at a clifftop seaside house, linking a failed suicide attempt, a schoolgirl wrongfully accused of theft, and the romantic life of a famous tennis player.

• Neil Albert, author of the Dave Garrett detective series, has spent much of the last few years writing an excellent blog about another crime-fictionist, the renowned Ross Macdonald. However, he has determined that his multi-post approach to analyzing each of Macdonald’s books hasn’t been paying off in readership stats. So he announced recently that he’s changing his approach. “I will write one post per book, briefly summarizing the plot without spoilers,” he says. “I will start again at the beginning, with The Dark Tunnel. The follow-up posts, released every five days, will be posts on specific subjects related to the book under discussion. No more chapter-by-chapter summaries; if you want to see those, they will remain available and are searchable. I expect to have two or three follow-up posts per book. … I hope the readership finds it more agreeable. Ross Macdonald deserves to be remembered one way or another.” Do check out Albert’s endeavors here when you get a free moment or two.

• Should you happen by Chicago between March and October of this year, don’t miss the Museum of Science and Industry’s new exhibit, “007 Science: Inventing the World of James Bond.”

• The online platform Substack doesn’t draw a great deal of my attention, but I have become fond of one weekly offering there: “Secret Sleuths,” by British crime historian (and host of Murder by the Sea) Dr. Nell Darby. A source of fascination for those of us hungry for more unusual stories of crimes through time.

• R.I.P., Don Murray. The California-born actor, who earned an Oscar nomination for his performance in the 1956 film Bus Stop, and who starred on TV in The Outcasts (1968-1969) and Knots Landing (1979-1981), died on February 2 at age 94. In addition to those better-known parts, Murray appeared in episodes of Amy Prentiss, Police Story, T.J. Hooker, Matlock, Murder, She Wrote, and Twin Peaks.

• It’s nice to see Christopher Huang’s second mystery, Unnatural Ends—one of my favorite books of 2023—selected by Cross-Examining Crime blogger Kate Jackson as her January “Book of the Month.” She observed recently that Unnatural Ends “is not an alibi-focused mystery, nor is it one in which lots of physical evidence is poured over for postmarks, fingerprints, or DNA. In that sense it reminds me of Five Little Pigs (1942) by Agatha Christie. It is a mystery of character and only by understanding the people involved and the past, will the truth emerge. You really get to know the characters, but it doesn’t drag as a book. I did anticipate the final solution, as it fits the characters perfectly, but I don’t think it was a cast-iron idea in my head—I did consider other possibilities as I went along. Given its character-driven nature, its dramatic secrets, and the engaging way the story is told, I think this would make for a great TV series.”

• Joe Peschi starred in a TV crime drama? Well, 1985’s Half Nelson was really more of a comedy-drama that found the pint-size Peschi portraying Rocky Nelson, described by Wikipedia as “a former New York City cop who moved to Beverly Hills, where he got a job at a private security service for the rich and famous, while attempting to make it as an actor. In addition to guarding celebrities, he also helps solve crimes.” Professional football players Bubba Smith and Dick Butkus, and singer-actor Dean Martin, helped fill out the cast of this show from producer Glen A. Larson. With such a lineup, you would have expected its run to be longer than six episodes. For the time being, you can watch the first episode of Half Nelson on YouTube.

Bullet Points: Break Out the Piñatas Edition

• This summer, Penguin Modern Classics will revive its once-iconic line of “bottle-green”-fronted crime and espionage novels. This new series will be curated by Penguin Press publishing director Simon Winder. Shotsmag Confidential provides an overview of the project: “Combining a careful selection of the very best from Penguin Classics’ extensive archives, including John le Carré, Josephine Tey, and Chester Himes, with exciting forgotten treasures which are well overdue a rediscovery, such as Edogawa Rampo and Davis Grubb, the first tranche of ten titles takes us from a sunshine soaked, yet bullet ridden California to a macabre Tokyo flat, through English country estates to the streets of Harlem. Transporting the reader through time and space, these novels can be outrageously entertaining but also chilling, filled with the darkest politics, vices, and betrayals.” There’s no word yet on when the next 10 paperbacks will see print, but Kate Jackson of Cross-Examining Crime already has a few suggestions of classic works Winder should add to his line sometime in the future.

• Ali Karim has posted, in Shots, a thoughtful interview with Dennis Lehane, author the new historical crime novel Small Mercies.

• A few recent pieces from CrimeReads, all of which are worth checking out: Katharine Coldiron’s fascinating look back at ABC-TV’s much-maligned 1990 police procedural/musical series, Cop Rock; Dean Jobb’s history of Gaston Derohan, a phony monk but successful swindler, who became a footnote in the early 1880s assassination of U.S. President James A. Garfield; Peter Handel’s interview with Sheila Halladay, the widow of British-born Canadian crime fictionist Peter Robinson, who died last October; and this essay, by writer Burt Weissbourd (Rough Justice), on why Seattle, Washington, is “such an attractive place to write thrillers.” That last article reminds me of one I penned a few years back, also for CrimeReads, highlighting various crime and mystery novels set in the Emerald City.

• Britain’s national Crime Writing Month will return this coming June with an assortment of special events planned.

• Says In Reference to Murder: “Netflix has acquired the rights to adapt the Danish novel series Department Q, which it plans to turn into a series adaptation, with one twist: it’s going to be filmed in Edinburgh, Scotland, not Denmark. Department Q is based on a best-selling series of crime novels by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen and centers on guilt-wracked Copenhagen detective Carl Mørck, demoted to a cold-case unit after a botched raid in which his partner is paralyzed and another police officer killed. Scott Frank, whose adaptation of The Queen’s Gambit was a smash hit for Netflix in 2020, will direct.”

(Right) Author Jussi Adler-Olsen

• Meanwhile, Mystery Fanfare carries word that a feature film adaptation of Alan Bradley’s beloved 2009 novel, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie—which introduced young amateur investigator Flavia de Luce—“is being shopped at the Cannes Film Market.” Actors Isla Gee and Martin Freeman are both attached to the project.

• Did you know Apple TV+ offers an animated Harriet the Spy series? OK, maybe I was the only one in the dark. The show kicked off in November 2021, and its second season debuts today.

• The first and only time I met best-selling Swedish author Håkan Nesser was at the 2007 Left Coast Crime convention in Seattle. Back then, I hadn’t read any of his novels, and in fact, had no frickin’ idea who he was when I was seated beside him at the convention’s awards banquet. Thankfully, Nesser was kind enough to overlook my incompetence and to supply me with reading suggestions from his growing oeuvre. I flashed back on that encounter yesterday, when I read on the online news site The Shift that the author has gotten into hot water over companies he registered on the Mediterranean island of Malta years ago, when it was “financially advantageous” to do so. Nesser now faces “court proceedings for withdrawing over €1.3 million” from said companies “without reporting it to the Swedish tax authorities.” These dubious doings were evidently brought to light in the Paradise Papers, “a set of over 13.4 million confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investments” that were leaked to German reporters in 2017. The Shift goes on to explain that Nesser has been “charged with aggravated tax evasion and his business advisor was charged with aiding and abetting aggravated tax evasion by assisting Nesser with his tax returns.” The writer denies wrongdoing, “and insists that both the company in Malta and the dividends sent to Sweden were done on the advice of his business advisors and that he had no intention of committing any crime.”

• And of course, this being Cinco de Mayo, Janet Rudolph celebrates with a selection of associated mystery tales.

Pierce’s Picks: “A Conspiracy of Faith”

A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.

A Conspiracy of Faith, by Jussi Adler-Olsen (Dutton):
What more tantalizing inspiration could there be for a criminal investigation than a message written in blood and secreted in a bottle? Unfortunately, that cast-off communication was discovered years ago and hundreds of miles away from Denmark, where it was dropped into the sea, and its lettering has faded badly since. In fact, the only really legible word is the first one: “Help.” But that’s enough to get Detective Carl Mørck and his eccentric colleagues from the Copenhagen Police Department’s cold-case division, Department Q, involved. Is this cry for rescue authentic, and if so, who sent it--and are they still alive? Once deciphered, the note suggests that children were kidnapped, and yet there were no reports of missing youngsters filed at the time and in the location it specifies. Further complicating matters, when Mørck & Co. finally determine who at least one of the absent youths must be, his parents stonewall the police rather than help them. Can Mørck and his two more energetic associates, Hafez el-Assad and Rose Knudsen, track down the first kidnap victims before their abductor snatches the next couple of children he’s targeted? Danish author Adler-Olsen’s first English-translated Department Q novel, The Keeper of Lost Causes (2001), earned him considerable attention, in part because enthusiastic readers of the late Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy” were hungry for more Nordic crime fiction. Keeper’s sequel, The Absent One (2012), kept interest in Department Q high, and no doubt Conspiracy (which will be released in the UK in July as Redemption) will attract a comparably wide audience. Although these books can be frustratingly thin on nuance, as far as the development of some characters (particularly the “bad guys”) goes, their detection components are strong and their pacing is dramatic.

* * *

Also new and worth finding a copy of this week is Tapestry (Mysterious Press/Open Road), Canadian author J. Robert Janes’ 14th novel featuring Chief Inspector Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the French Sûreté and his partner, German Detektiv Inspektor Hermann Kohler. Their latest adventure, set in Paris during an early 1943 blackout, finds them investigating a burglarized stamp collector’s shop, the brutal murder of a young man found naked, black-market dealings in improperly confiscated goods, and the rape of a woman--the spouse of a prisoner of war--whose nighttime attack may trace to her alleged willingness to accept other, Nazi companionship in her husband’s absence. The concluding pages of this work suggest Janes may actually have penned Tapestry prior to Bellringer, which was published last year; however, you needn’t read that earlier novel to enjoy this new one. ... And British shoppers should be on the lookout for The Dying Hours (Little, Brown), Mark Billingham’s 11th outing for Detective Inspector Tom Thorne. Here we find the oft-reprimanded and lately demoted Thorne seeing something more sinister than suicide behind the recent deaths of elderly Londoners. Naturally, none of his police colleagues take Thorne’s warnings of a serial slayer seriously, so he sets out on his own to find a killer who has nothing to lose. Billingham’s yarns are dark and frequently bleak, but they’re also pretty darn gripping. The Dying Hours is due out in the States in early August.

Stumbling Toward Redemption

If you poke around the Kirkus Reviews Web site today, you should discover my review of The Keeper of Lost Causes, by best-selling Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen. It’s a quite remarkable, if not flawless, novel that will more than likely appear on many Best of 2011 book lists at the end of the year. Here’s the intro to my Kirkus critique:

In the hierarchy of “reluctant detectives,” Danish homicide cop Carl Mørck ranks right up there with the most disinterested and disillusioned of the breed. Although once counted among his department’s best and brightest (“a tall, elegant man from Jutland who caused eyebrows to raise and lips to part”), after a quarter-century with the Copenhagen Police, and following a recent violent encounter that left one of his partners dead and the other paralyzed from the neck down, Mørck is now dismissed as “indolent, surly, morose, always bitching,” someone who “treats his colleagues like crap.”

In other words, he’s the perfect candidate for a brand-new, high-profile position.

To read the full post, simply click here.

Making His Mørck

I feel fairly comfortable in predicting that there will be lots of talk this August about Jussi Adler-Olsen, the Danish ovelist whose first book featuring Copenhagen detective Carl Mørck, The Keeper of Lost Causes (also known in the UK as Mercy), is set to be released that month in the States by Dutton. Before then, check out parts one, two, and three of Bookdagger’s video interview with the author.

READ MORE: “Review: Mercy by Jussi Adler-Olsen,” by Ben Hunt
(Material Witness).

The Great Dane

From the Nordic Bookblog comes the news that Danish crime novelist Jussi Adler-Olsen has won the Glass Key Award for his 2009 thriller, Flaskepost fra P (Message in a Bottle). The Glass Key--named of course in honor of Dashiell Hammett’s 1931 novel--is given annually by the Crime Writers of Scandinavia to a work composed by a Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, or Swedish author.

As the Nordic Blog explains, Flaskepost fra P is “the third book in Adler-Olsen’s outstanding series about police commissioner Carl Mørck and his odd and intriguing Department Q.” Previous entries in that series have been Kvinden i buret (The Woman in the Cage) and Fasandræberne (The Pheasant Killers), both published in 2008. Unfortunately, Adler-Olsen’s books have not yet been translated into English.